Sunday, August 02, 2015, 5:28 p.m.

Pirates seize oil tanker in Ivory Coast, officials say

ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast  Armed men have hijacked a tanker carrying 5,000 tons of jet fuel from an Ivory Coast port and taken it off the coast of Ghana, though its precise whereabouts are unknown, government authorities and maritime officials said Monday.

The Panamanian-flagged vessel ITRI was first seized Wednesday as the tanker was preparing to deposit the Jet A1 fuel at the port of Abidjan, Ivory Coast’s commercial capital, according to a statement Monday from Ivory Coast’s government — its first communication on the case. It said officials had located the vessel off neighboring Ghana, without specifying.

Shipowner Brila Energy, a petroleum distributor based in Nigeria, said it was monitoring the situation.

“The vessel is still missing and the hijackers whose sole objective is to steal the cargo of Jet A1 on board the vessel are yet to make any demands,” Chairman Rowaye Jubril told The Associated Press in an e-mail. He said all 16 crew members were Nigerian, and said the possibility of the fuel leaking into the water was “remote” because the vessel had not been in any accident.

Noel Choong, head of the International Maritime Bureau’s pirate reporting center in Malaysia, said in many previous cases, the pirates released the crew after they had siphoned out the oil and obtained any valuable cargo.

The ship initially had trouble docking because a sand storm reduced visibility, a government statement said. Later, the ship’s captain radioed the port manager to report difficulty maneuvering. Shortly afterward, contact was lost with the vessel. Then ship consignee Koda Maritime informed port officials that armed men had taken control of the tanker.